This is a guest post by Sherry Fleydervish. Sherry is a leading expert in pediatric mental health in Chicago, IL. She treats children struggling with a variety of emotional and behavioral issues at Individual and Family Connection in Lincoln Park. Read more about Sherry at IFCcounseling.com. You can find Individual and Family Connection on Facebook, too!... Read more »

Sick of those picture-perfect home tours on mommy blogs? Me too. Here’s what my house actually looks like right this very second. I’d like to say it’s because we just got back in town, or because we got off schedule with a new foster placement yesterday. But the truth is that this is just how... Read more »

Yesterday we returned from our first real couple’s vacation in nine years. We picked up our two youngest from the grandparents on our way into town. Our three eight-year-olds had one more night at sleepaway camp. We did some laundry and enjoyed a relatively quiet dinner before turning in for the night. Before bed I... Read more »

Today pretty much everything, everywhere was flooded. We wasted a few hours watching Moana, and then decided it was time to be productive. So we made ice cream. Our cream maker was given to us as a family Christmas gift from my parents several years ago, and we don’t pull it out often, but it’s always... Read more »

Decisions that changed my life for better or worse… So, basically, every single decision I’ve ever made. Mike suggested I write about the decision to do foster care. “Too predictable,” I say. He suggests writing about the decision to foster teenagers. “Did that change my life for the better or for the worse?” I ask,... Read more »

Am I An Adult? I’m 17 and waking up, groggy and uncomfortable in a hospital room. It’s Christmas morning. I had emergency surgery the night before. I’m alone. I occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve ever been alone in a hospital room. My whole life, I was fortunate to always have a parent... Read more »

A couple years ago I wrote about how our family of seven managed to stretch our dollar for an affordable trip to Disney World. I promised a follow-up post about how to enjoy Disney World with a large family, but life got busier and busier, and here, at long last, is that post. With five... Read more »

If you have a teenager it’s just a matter of time until you have to deal with sexting in some form. This morning in a Facebook parenting group I read the gazillionth post which basically said “Help! My teenager is sending inappropriate pictures online! What do I do?!” Cue the concerned parents with their endless... Read more »

It has been forever since I’ve written, so I thought I’d take a minute to just put a little update out into the blogosphere. I have about four different “update” blogs sitting in my draft folder. But each time I started writing one, our family would change before I could finish it. Such is the... Read more »

Once a month ChicagoNow has a writing challenge where we have one hour to write about a specific prompt. I do not participate monthly, usually because I’m asleep. Because I’m a tired old mom of sixteen gazillion children. But tonight I’m up and I liked the prompt, so here you go: Write about something you... Read more »